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How is that "conversion"? A student being more open about their feelings is not the same as a student having previously been fully straight and having turned into bi or gay.
And as you yourself say "Why would it not?". Of course they are not a special case, we would expect at least some amount of an increase in behavior when it becomes destigmatized. But I would never refer to that as conversion, rather that's just more openness. Maybe this is just a disagreement about the wording, I take "conversion" to be more along the lines of "trying to change their actual feelings" rather than "changing their willingness to be open".
Now conversion could be happening alongside it, boosting the numbers up. But that's not evidence for it occuring.
Being open isn’t an uncritical good. My kid being ‘more open’ to experimentation with substance use is an uncritically bad thing, for example.
It was an ideological choice of the state to decide that deviant sexuality is worth celebrating and kids should be open to it. Of course sodomy is bad- penises don’t belong in assholes, go look at one after it’s had a penis in it and conclude it shouldn’t be exit only- but that’s not the point- public schools are choosing what things to promote ‘openness’ to. Imagine a public school promoting ‘openness’ to a traditional marriage with ten kids. You can’t.
I remember in Catholic schools we had endless propaganda(and that is, literally, what it was) about being ‘open to the calling of God’. In other words think about becoming a priest or nun. Somehow this never extended to preparing for getting married even if Catholic doctrine also sees that as a calling from God. There are choices of emphasis(and parents who send their children to Catholic schools understand the emphasis and accept it).
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That "more open" was a political and ideological choice by the state. Interest groups lobbied to make "more open" happen. Students and schools did not used to be open about sexual minority identities, but now they are. If you change someone's views, you have converted them.
We do have a disagreement about wording, because I am using the actual definition of conversion and you have made up your own incoherent definition. A students "willingness to be open" is a students feeling! If you are try to change a students willingness to be open, you are trying to change their actual feelings! That is what it means to convert someone!
But it is not just being "more open". LGBT is a group specifically and deliberately organized around sexual minority identity. The idea that sexuality, and particularly minority sexuality, should be incorporated into identity is a central tenant of LGBTism. So it is not just being open, because a person being open about something is inherently a person incorporating that thing into their identity.
I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't a native speaker because conversion in this context would never be used "changing a person's feelings about how open they can be" and more about "changing them from being straight to being gay" like we see in conversion therapy trying to do the opposite and "cure homosexuality" and make people straight.
Most people here in the US (and I assume most of the native English speakers) understand that because conversion therapy has been practiced by religious groups against homosexuality for years. Now the end result has been suppression (because they fail) but no one says "You're trying to convert X!" when they mean being more accepting.
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A sexually-reproducing non-eusocial species has 25% of it's population "gay" and we just didn't know it the whole time? At some point, one has to realize one is just engaging in creating "just-so" stories to justify an unjustifiable belief.
Except depending what gay means that is perfectly plausible. Consider that homosexual behavior in prisons becomes much more prevalent, even if those imprisoned would prefer women/men. Consider the idea of being "Lesbian until graduation". The prevalence of men who have sex with men but do not identify as homosexual etc.
"The LGBT slang terms lesbian until graduation (LUG),[1] gay until graduation (GUG), and bisexual until graduation (BUG) are used to describe primarily women of high school or college age who are assumed to be experimenting with or adopting a temporary lesbian or bisexual identity, but who will ultimately adopt a heterosexual identity."
Along with Kinsey reporting that sexuality seems to be somewhat more fluid than just gay/straight for many people (particularly women) and the idea that a quarter of the Gen Z population are LGB in that they would consider sexual acts with their own sex, under certain circumstances even if in general they will prefer the opposite sex looks to be well supported. And would have very little impact on sexual reproduction.
If those people identify as bisexual or pansexual, (so boosting numbers who identify as LGB) generally end up with the opposite sex, the circle is squared. They are both LGB AND will end up in a relationship capable of sexual reproduction. And handily the evidence of numbers we have supports this:
The biggest growth in identification as LGB is among bisexuals and women specifically. If you look at the breakdown in Gen Z, 73% of women who say they are LGB are actually just B. Only 22% of those who identify as LGB are L or G. It is the huge increase of those who are bisexual which is behind the vast majority of the overall increase, indeed the L or G percentage has only increased from 2% among the Silent Generation to 5% among Gen Z. And most of those Bi women will end up in conventional male/female relationships. And historically would have identified as heterosexual even after some experimentation with women. Now they identify as bisexual. Behaviors have not changed much. Just identification.
Back in the early 2000's some 20% of women admitted to same sex contact, but only 5% identified as lesbian or bisexual. Now about 20% of Gen Z women identify as lesbian or bisexual with 25% of Gen Z women admitting some same sex contact. Labelling explains pretty much the entire increase here. Hell upwards of 60% of women admit some same sex attraction. It's quite possible all or most women are technically bi-sexual!
This is no unjustifiable belief. Just a change in how (primarily) women label themselves.
Some excerpts to add anecdote to data:
"Once upon a time in middle school, I came out to my mother as bisexual. Like many girls that age who have non-hetero tendencies, I had a mother who didn’t buy it. It’s normal to experiment with other girls, she told me. "
"In high school, my label shifted to lesbian. Though I felt a rush of nervousness around my friend’s Goth guy pals, in addition to an embarrassing crush on one of my older sister’s hockey-and-football-playing friends, I wanted a relationship with a girl."
"Ten years later, I’m living in San Francisco and married to a man. My existence is still label-free, but my story is a hard one to explain to those who haven’t experienced any fluidity in their sexual identity."
"Research on human sexuality is pretty limited. The evidence we do have suggests women are “sexually fluid” creatures, which sounds like some kind of secretion issue but actually refers to a mix and match approach when it comes to the sex of our lovers, and not necessarily in equal proportion. I’m a member of this group"
Can't imagine why.
The only people who would even want to research this in the first place are already relatively sexually open [at least, in theory], so the results they get aren't going to be couched in language that makes it applicable in a way to the average man or woman that doesn't instantly just turn into more ammunition for the gender/culture war.
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This.
If it looks like a social contagion, spreads like a social contagion, and quacks like a social contagion...
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Isn't that isolated demand for rigor? Can you come up with examples of students having previously been bi or gay and having turned fully straight due to hetero conversion therapy?
We can certainly come up with examples of cultures that have been previously bi/gay and were turned fully straight.
Such as?
Such as ancient Greece and Rome, and yes, I know it was not the same conception of homosexuality that we have now, but the facts are that it was at one point common to bugger young men (and even act as if it's better than women) and later on, very much not.
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This would be outright illegal in many areas.
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It’s not hard to find people who are ex-gay.
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